Mad Hot Ballroom--or All We Need is Dance Lessons

I saw the acclaimed documentary film Mad Hot Ballroom this weekend and I loved it--who couldn't love those adorable little ethnically diverse kids and their wonderful teachers? But something in the back of my brain kept nagging at me--and after a while, I began to see that this kind of story, as uplifting (not my word) as it is, masks the real problems. It says to us: look how easily we can solve the problems of poverty, drug abuse and single or absentee parents! It matters not that our so-called "safety net" has holes big enough to drive a M-1 tank through; and the bottom rungs of the ladder to the American Dream have been cleverly sawed off by the Bush Administration's tax gifts to the wealthy. Not to worry! A concentrated series of dance lessons and a city-wide competition and it all goes away! This documentary, for all it's hopeful moments, fails to examine the systemic stranglehold of poverty and the third rate school systems that our urban areas have to tolerate because we refuse to examine the unjust method of funding through property tax. I noted this as I read about my own suburban high school adding a new swimming pool this summer while the roofs of Detroit's school leak onto 25-year-old desks. The movie I want to see would follow these same dancing kids through high school. I don't imagine my Republican friends would recommend such a movie so enthusiastically. Don't get me started.